Piano Day Date in the current year: March 28, 2024

The piano is a keyboard instrument that was invented by Italian maker of musical instruments Bartolomeo Cristofori in the 18th century. The principal difference between the piano and its predecessors like the clavichord and the harpsichord is that the piano allows to produce sounds of different volume depending on how forcefully or softly the keys are pressed. The modern piano evolved in the 19th century.

The piano played an important role in the development of many genres of Western music, including classical music, blues, jazz, and rock. Many composers, songwriters, and conductors can play the piano because this instrument allows to experiment with various chords and polyphony. The piano is also widely used in music education.

Nils Frahm established Piano Day in 2015 to celebrate his favorite musical instrument and everyone around it: pianists, composers, piano makers, piano tuners and technicians, piano movers and, most important, listeners. Frahm decided to hold Piano Day on the 88th day of the year as a reference to the instrument’s 88 keys. The inaugural celebration started off with a bang: the Piano Day team announced the construction of the world’s tallest piano, the Klavins M450 – a unique vertical concert grand piano.

Since 2016, Nils Frahm has complied special Piano Day playlists and shared them on SoundCloud and Spotify. In 2022, Piano Day teamed up with the media label LEITER to produce its first compilation of exclusive and previously unreleased piano pieces from different corners of the world that had been meticulously selected to showcase the versatility of the piano and the many styles of piano music.

Another project curated by the Piano Day team is “Give a Piano”. It is meant to encourage owners of unused pianos to donate them to musicians in need or non-profit organizations, or place their pianos in public areas where they can be played as street pianos and enjoyed by a lot of people.

Every year, dozens of Piano Day concerts and other events and activities are held around the world. For example, countries that participated in Piano Day 2023 included Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

You can celebrate Piano Day by attending an event near you, watching an online event, or organizing an event of your own. If you’re a musician, share a video of yourself playing the piano and your history with the instrument on social media with the hashtag #PianoDay. If you can’t play but consider yourself a piano lover, you can share any piano-related content to spread the word about the holiday!

* date for 2024